Is Netflix’s company culture of fear real? What happened when you were fired?
A little bit of my background, I’m a software engineer with less than 4 years of work experience. I ask this question because recently I got a senior software engineer offer from Netflix but I don’t know if I should take it. I heard that they pay really really well but they also fire people like crazy, like 2 mistakes and you’re out. Most of the engineers on the team I interviewed have over 8 years of experience, will I be considered not an A+ player compared to them? In Netflix’s culture deck they say that they fire adequate employees right away and only keep superstar engineers.
My major concern: Job security is very important to me not because I have a family to raise but because I’m on H1B work visa, which means if I got fired I would no longer be able to stay in US unless I could get another employer to sponsor my visa within a month. I’m basically happy with my salary at my current job and I don’t want to ruin my career just because I take the bad money from an unstable job. Another thing is that under such pressure and fear of losing job, will one grow as an engineer? I always think that engineers learn a lot from mistakes, if one is not allowed to make any mistake, how do engineers at Netflix grow?
Since Blind is an (to some extent) anonymous society, can someone tell us about how it really feels like to work at Netflix? Is the culture of fear real? Is the pay really worth the workload?
And to those who got fired by Netflix, how long did you stay there before you got fired? And what happened before you were shown the door? Is real that Netflix is basically zero-tolerant to mistakes?
comments
Seek a company where you can stay for at least a decade, if you plan on getting the green card.